USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 18
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Geo. H. Mullin succeeded as superintendent in '93, and served seven years. The Wallace school was built for eight thousand dollars, and in the spring of '99 the South school, which then was the high school, and which also cost eight thousand dollars, was burned. A new high school was built on the site of the old brick for twenty-six thousand dollars. Mr. Mullin increased the teaching force from fifteen to twenty-one, and changed the course of study, making it a full four years' course.
W. A. Pratt became superintendent in 1900, and served three years, con- forming the high school course to college requirements, and started a school library which now has four thousand six hundred volumes.
R. B. Crone came in 1905, staying three years, and Bruce Francis suc- ceeded in the fall of 1908, but will leave us at the end of this school year, Lovell Anderson being principal of the high school, with this battery of teachers for 1909:
HIGH SCHOOL.
Margaret J. Safley, Stena Hansen, H. E. Case, Ella Woodford, Mary Bry- ant, Ethel G. Nichols, Jeanette Jamison, Martha Reckling (the latter teaching music and drawing in all the schools)
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SOUTH SCHOOL.
Minnie Conner, principal ; Lucy Meacham, Elizabeth Klein, Annie C. Relimel.
WALLACE SCHOOL.
Rate Montgomery, principal ; Emma Buxbaum, Mary D. Hatch, Edna Detwiler.
CENTENNIAL SCHOOL.
Etha L. Purvis, principal : Katherine Stichter, Gertrude Kendall, Nannie Laughead.
HEIGHTS SCHOOL.
Margaret Young, principal ; Gertrude Smith, Louie Harding, Maud McCreedy.
KINDERGARTEN.
Laura B. Noyes, principal ; Verne Ashby, Carol F. Forgy.
Since this cast was set there were resignations and elections, thus: Prof. A. C Fuller succeeds Superintendent Francis and Mr. F. G. Robb follows Anderson as principal : Martha Hutchinson takes Miss Safley's place : Wilma Row, Miss Reckling's; Kate Montgomery, Miss Rehmel's; Myra Shaffer, Miss Detwiler's; Margaret Doolittle, Miss Purvis': Effie McCreedy, Mar- garet Young's ; Vera Alberson, Miss Ashby's.
JANITORS.
High -- Henderson Walker ; South-Chas. R. Guzeman ; Centennial- Oliver Hicks; Wallace-1. K. Mckenry; Heights-W. H. Greer ; Kinder- garten-Lewis H. Wallace.
SCHOOL BOARD.
A. H. Wallace, president ; Dr. E. T. Wickham, Thos. J. Berdo, Frank R. Sage, C. C. Cunningham, J. W. Morton, secretary.
Mr. Wallace is this year serving his thirty-eighth year on the board, and the thirty-third year as president. He and the late Mr. Wilson, Jr., are the most altruistic men in our city's history-glad to serve for nothing and find themselves. Of such also is the kingdom.
The valuation of the city's school houses is sixty-five thousand dollars ; of apparatus, five thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine dollars.
The last enumeration in the city was six hundred and twenty-three boys, six hundred and sixty-nine girls. In the county the total is five thousand eight hundred and thirty-five.
The amount of tax levied in '08 to support all the schools in the county was eighty-five thousand fifty-five dollars and twenty cents.
The city district this year asked for fourteen thousand dollars for teachers. five thousand dollars for contingent, and one thousand five hundred dollars
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for the bond fund. A school statement for '72-3 asked for one thousand six hundred dollars for teachers and one thousand one hundred dollars for con- tingent ; and in '74, one thousand one hundred dollars for each of these funds.
High school graduates have averaged thirty plus the last half dozen or more years. The trend for several years is to make the high school a sort of university or academy at least, a feeder to the university, and its graduates enter the State University and the Chicago Northwestern University without examinations. The scope is indicated by the chairs: History and civics, liter- ature, English, mathematics, Latin, German, music and drawing. As yet no Sanscrit, Hebrew, or theology, but in four years from now there will be a chair of Agriculture, and pupils will no doubt learn how to raise chipped beef, smoked hams, boneless turkey, scalloped oysters, etc.
Academy .- In May, '54, a Washington academy was projected by trustees L. G. Bell, S. C. McCune, T. B. Dinsmore, James Beatty, B. P. Baldwin, N. Chipman, W. H. Jenkins, Hugh Lee, A. H. Patterson.
No one knows aught of this. Rev. Mr. Dinsmore and Miss Florilla King taught a school on the Frank Brindley corner, but it was not an academy. It may have been a private school, and "academy" stuck on it to gain it prestige. It may be dismissed, but there was an incorporation, it seems.
Academy of Sciences .- On December 14, '80, the Washington Academy of Sciences was incorporated by Capt. Kellogg. W. H. Hott, Chas. Hebener, Jno. W. Zaring, Geo. E. Story, W. N. Hood et al. They gathered geological and botanical specimens, collected eggs (not hens'), and stuffed birds and animals. Kellogg also canned a good many stories and jokes. The members caught most of the birds and animals by sprinkling salt on their narratives.
The Real Academy .- On February 29, '72, the Academic Association was incorporated with twenty thousand dollars capital, by Joseph Keck, Nor- man Everson, Nathan Littler, Dr. Chilcote, Michael Wilson, J. H. Bacon, Col. Bell, John Bryson, W. Wilson, Jr., Jas. Dawson, J. F. Henderson, Dr. McClelland, A. H. Patterson, John Graham, G. G. Bennett, J. P. Hus- kins. A sixteen thousand dollar building was erected in '74. The school has graduated four hundred and ten of both sexes, some of whom have made shining marks in many places. It has been in the care, in turn, of Prof. S. E. McKee, twice; W. P. Johnston, two years; Martha Rudd, one year ; J. C. Burns, two or three years ; John T. Matthews, W. C. Allen, C. S. Dodds, R. D. Dougherty, seven years.
For several years there has been an average attendance of one hundred and fifty, and they have spent two thousand eight hundred dollars per year in tuition and as much more for rent, board, etc. And several families have moved here to educate their children. The school has been of distinct eco-
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
nomic value to the town. The present faculty is R. D. Dougherty, principal and teacher of Mathematics and Sciences ; Margaret Doolittle, A. B., Litera- ture and English ; Nora Corette, A. B., History and English ; Mame Jericho, Shorthand and Typewriting : Flo Parish, Piano and Harmony.
Trustees,-A. 11. Wallace, president ; Ab. Anderson, treasurer ; F. L. Wil- son, C. M. Keck, 11. M. Eicher, Col. D. J. Palmer, R. D. Dougherty, secretary.
Prof. Dougherty has been an indefatigable, worker and has done a great deal of good. The modern high school trenches on academic grounds, and academies have hard sledding. But Prof. Dougherty has done thor- ough work, and put graduates into the second and third year of the university.
Washington College .- In April, '54, the Associate Presbyterian church resolved to found this school. Nine acres were bought for a seat and campus on South Marion street, a lovely elm grove on the rising ground one might have then seen closing the vista looking south from Cook & Sherman's drug store. School began September 1, '55, in the third story of Win. Blair's block, and in '56 it occupied the First U. P. church, now music hall, and in two years it had one hundred and ninety-three students. In the third year there were five ready to enter the junior year. The faculty was: Rev. Dr. J. R. Doig, president and teacher of Moral Science and Greek and Latin Literature.
Rev. Dr. W. H. Wilson, A. M., Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science.
Miss M. S. Walsh, principal female department and assistant in Mathe- matics.
Jno. K. Sweeney, A. B., and L. F. Sherman, tutors ; James Dawson, treas- urer.
One account says the endowment was forty-five thousand dollars, an- other fifty thousand dollars-both absurd. It was ten thousand dollars, and in '64. Rev. David A. Wallace, president of Monmouth College, took it over to his school, saying he would take care of our professors and return the money fund whenever the Iowa synod called for it. It never returned. Long- headed Wallace! He did take Dr. Doig and Sweeney to his crib.
In the meantime a brick building, three stories high, fifty by seventy-five feet was put up, but only the first floor was ever used. In '61 there were five graduates-J. F. Graham, a fine singer ; Wm. H. McMillan, Matthew Robb, John H. Walker, Geo. Mitchell. "Why does Nature love the number 5 and the star form repeat?" All five became ministers.
It was a co-ed college, and its main function or industry seemed to be to turn out grists of romance and weddings, a failing of all such bivalve schools
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Mary Cowden married W. H. McMillan, and Said Oburn, Graham. And there were plenty more affinities. There were no walks down there, and the imaginative reader can guess what perfectly lovely times smitten swains had helping the nymphs on the less muddy sides of the roads and over the stiles into the leafy campus. I can distinctly see not only pink and blue ribbons around slender waists, but hooks that looked much like manly arms clasping the aforesaid as tightly as iron hoops on a sugar barrel. And not a single filly kicked. The town fellows caught on, and frequented the paradise. Howard Holden captured Mary Oburn, Bachelor Everson thought the school was a fine pasture-run for fairies, graces and muses, nor was Cadwallader a slow coach at hops with those student girls, groups of angels in vivid sashes. Granville G. Bennett, Nort. P. Chipman, John H. Walker, Granville G. Cowden, John Daw- son, Dave Palmer, Dave and Bob Kilgore, Wm. Burnside, Matthew G. Ham- mill, "Pap," "Big-footed Barber" Mccutcheon, a giant who shaved all the boys, were gay and festive gamboliers and high-stepping bucks. Dr. M. C. Terry and Miss Israel, of Brighton, whom he married, were students there, and Sarah Kinkade, now Mrs. Hon. B. F. Brown, and her brother Milton, Daniel Harris, who became cloth and still lives, an invalid, in Cuba, where he lost a son.
In '62, the graduating class was Granville G. Cowden, Andrew McMillan, Luther Winter, brother to Mrs. A. H. Wallace, Mollie Cowden, Helen Chip- man, Clara Allen, Jennie Cleaves, Ellen Israel, Sallie Jenkins, later Mrs. Erk. McJunkin, Marietta Conger (Mrs. Pay Master General T. H. Stanton), Cordelia Ross.
Class of '63, Celia Moore (Mrs. Prof. Currier), Jno. A. Donnell, Margaret Orr.
The class of '64 was Mary and Rhoda Craven, Mary Lindsey, later Mrs. D. W. French, Mary Bradford who became Mrs. John G. Stewart. So the school became a real alma mater.
And then a storm smote that house, and it was condemned as dangerous, and was torn down. Many of its rocks are in the foundation of the Joseph Keck house. and don't know the difference. That wind, and the war that sucked out students as by the electric vortex of a tornado, gave the college its coup de grace. Nathan Littler bought the tract years later and built on it, and now there is not a trace of the ancient academe.
Wm. A. Cook used to attend the commencements under the elms in August, and can yet see the graduates sweeping off gestures like condor's wings, and reeling off yards and rods of jargon in Latin and Greek ora- tions, stunts that had about as much vital relation to modern life as Elijah's chariot of fire would have to a red devil of an automobile.
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After ten years in harness, Dr. Doig resigned in '64 the prexyhood and went to Monmouth College, and so closed our college incident.
Postscript on Schools .-- The old court house in the square was a very accommodating building. It found room for the shoe shop of J. C. Conger and the tailor shop of R. W. McElroy. There sat Mac, with a face as austere as that of a terra cotta god, and cross-legged like a Turk, with needle, shears and goose. It also served as a school house till one was built, the court room up-stairs being the school. Where now is the roar of the stamping up and down those stairs? Gone, gone, beyond the back stars. In the fall of 1842, Miss Sarah M. Young taught a three months' school there, paying six dol- lars rent. In winters, Norman Everson and Elder Caleb B. Campbell taught there. One pupil was Nathan Littler. The Elder, it seems, was not up in grammar, and for a wonder some pupils clamored to take that study, which is usually esteemed a bore. So the Elder hired Rev. Albert Sturgis, later a missionary to the South Pacific islands, to do the Lindlay Murray act. At Christmas time the boys warned the Elder they would bar him out if he did not treat, and they bawled "Chrismus gif "' as calves bawl for skim milk. Be- fore daylight, Christmas morning, they gathered in the school room and locked the door. Before nine a. m., they got very hollow and faint, having skipped breakfast. The Elder came, and they became tense. Parley-Elder : "I demand admission." Boys in chorus: "Chrismus gif'," bawled the rebels, and stated the terms, viz. : "Money to buy a gallon of whisky and a bushel of eating apples." Elder went away. At one p. m., ditto, ditto. Hunger gnawed : this thing was getting stale, very old, decrepit, sway-backed, and as no backsheesh was forthcoming, the besieged were bored to the limit, and felt sold. The next day the Elder penalized them by inflicting a long tem- perance lecture.
No school house here till '44. In the summer of '40 Polly Ashby taught, perhaps, the first school here in a room in southwest Washington, near the line of Orr's addition, for fifty dollars a term, money raised by subscription. Among the pupils were Elmira Moore ( Mrs. Mather), her sister Julia and brother Marion. James and Mattie Jackson, Geo. A. Stone and sister Augusta, the teacher's four sisters and one brother, and N. Littler. In later years, Stone met Martha Jackson, and she rallied him on her spelling him down, and he gallantly said "you were the only one who could do that." He became colonel of the Twenty-fifth Iowa, and came home a brigadier general. Littler thinks her school was in '41, not '40.
In the winter of '45-6 teacher Reed whipped a merchant's boy for spelling a word badly. The lad stood the torture as long as he could, then fought back. Reed was sued before E. Ross, justice of the peace, and acquitted, but
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the public sided with the boy. Sam Joy, uncle to the lad, made Reed kneel in the street and apologize and beg pardon. In the trial, Baz. Williams assailed Reed's lawyer, Churchman, but the court ordered him out of the house. One day when Crooked creek was high, overflowing the bottoms, Baz. ran a rude ferry. Two men and said lawyer were passengers. Baz. threatened to drown Churchman, and he begged piteously. He was dumped on a stump in five feet of water, one hundred yards from shore, and for a long while was as solitary as Stylites on his pillar-"grand, gloomy and peculiar."
School held ten years in the little brick on the Cowles lot after the court house was abandoned. As late as the winter of '51-2 Littler taught there some of the pupils Hugh Kendall names a few pages back.
M. Goodspeed came in '59 and started the first nursery in Cedar town- ship, and taught school in the winter of '62-3, and one morning after a sleet storm he thawed out a lot of quail whose heads were incrusted with ice. Sam C. Gardner was the first teacher in Lexington, and licked the big boys, but not the big girls. He had seventy pupils. He turned out one big girl, but she rather turned the tables on him by gravely going around and shaking good-bye hands with every mate. with mock solemnity. It tickled the scholars, and Sam grew red and sweat behind the ears .:
Hannah Pinkerton taught the first school in Yankee Diggins in Lime Creek, and a relative of Hon. Hod. Willson also taught there. Marsh W. Bailey says Horace was also a teacher. and one of the best, the most tactful, he ever knew. Horace will please step down in front with bouquets.
The first select school was taught by Rev. Dr. Geo. C. Vincent in the upper story of the Associate Presbyterian or Seceder church, and he was followed by Joshua Tracy, a student at law, who afterwards became a judge, and was a locally famous songster .
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CHAPTER XII.
INFORMAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
A half century ago the County Agricultural Society was a sort o' people's college, combining amusement and instruction with the advantage of a market for live stock and other farm products. An "agricultural hoss trot" is educa- tional, and keeps the blood from coagulating.
The Washington Agricultural Society was organized in '53. The premi- iums were small. In '58 the entries rose to two hundred, and two hundred dollars were lavished in premiums. H. A. Ball took a first on draft stallion, Morgan Hart two dollars on a matched team, Calvin Craven three dollars on a jack, Ed. Clemens four dollars on a Durham bull, and took five other - premiums ; F. H. Hutchinson's sheep won' everything ; Wm. G. Stewart had the hest hogs ; C. N. Stewart the loudest quacking ducks ; Geo. Hayes chickens laid the most eggs, but Bill Knox's could cackle the loudest; Mrs. John Dawson's quilt took the cake for the most patches : Jacob McFarland spun the best yarn, while Mrs. M. Palmer knocked the socks off from all rivals in knit- ting the same; Mrs. Wm. Anderson made the best cake, Mrs. Morgan Hart the best gooseberry jelly. Calvin Craven was president ; Nort P. Chipman, secretary ; Joseph R. Lewis, treasurer ; directors, John H. Palmer, Jesse Pear- son, F. T. Loveland, J. S. Reeves, Jas. Vincent, H. Taylor, Jason Thompson, J. T. Sales, J. G. Melvin, D. R. Carnahan, N. Littler, S. E. Hawthorn, F. H. Hutchinson, Jno. S. Beaty. The grounds were on the Mt. Pleasant road, the site of the home of the late John M. Wagner.
In '75, another society was formed to supersede the earlier one, and it bought a tract on the Brighton road, not far from the present Chautauqua grounds.
The fair in '79 took in one thousand seven hundred dollars, and paid all premiums, sold fifty shares of stock, and chose these officers : E. F. Brockway, president ; J. G. Stewart, vice president ; G. G. Rodman, treasurer : Andy Duke, superintendent of grounds ; B. F. Brown, marshal. Directors : D. Mickey, Ed. White, Fin. McCall, A. B. Rose, B. F. Brown, M. Bradford, R. Ander- son, J. H. Laughead, Wm. Billingsley, S. E. Woodford, H. Ingham, Hugh
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Draper, David Wilson, E. W. H. Ashby, Dr. Joseph Brockway, J. A. Cun- ningham.
Fairs were fine things to break bad droughts with. Many and many a time maidens radiant in white gowns and pink sashes went home be.Iraggled with flood and mud, garments clinging like bathing suits.
People got tired, after fifty to seventy-five years, seeing the same old afghans, ottomans, crazy quilts, etc., shown in Art ( ?) Hall, and fairs came to an end in 1897, under the presidency of James A. Cunningham.
These fairs were awful bores to editors-to set the list of premium awards in solid nonpareil was a task. We coralled the secretary and compiled the list on Sunday afternoons. There are thirty-seven annual Sundays that I thus broke into splinters-that many, anyhow. But the fairs did one good thing : by means of the agricultural hoss trot enough sports were lured to the fairs to see the live stock, and from that chance sight sprang the great in- dustry of fine stock breeding in this county, an interest that ran into many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nelson Stewart and Ed. Clemons brought in from Kentucky, via Illinois, the Henry Clay big white cattle; P. R. McMillan ran wholly to hogs ; B. F. Brown and brother and Ol. E. Brown and many others dipped into Vermont sheep; J. R. Crumpacker. J. G. Myers, John G. Stewart and his brother Wm. G., and later Milt Yard, boomed short horns ; the Singmasters developed heavy horses, and Ol. Brown introduced the Old Champ and Sleepy Joe trotting stock, and our fast nags to-day trace back to them. Ike Wagner's Bashaw came thence. These breeders, per- haps, did not make much money, but they did immense good in raising the standard of profitable breeds. The old fairs stimulated this desire for better stock of all kinds, and it was the trotting horse that kept life in the fairs -they would, else, have utterly failed.
Washington County Old Settlers' Association .- It was founded in 1877, and the first annual meeting was held in Washington, September 6, of that . year, and drew an enormous crowd. The procession was five miles long,
required one and a half hours to pass a given point, and said point was not a saloon. There were one thousand two hundred vehicles in line, averaging seven persons to the wagon. The first pioneers, dating from 1836, viz., Adam Ritchey, Richard Moore, David Goble, Sr., were represented by the sons George and Simpson Goble, Amos, William and Jesse Moore, Ritchey by his daughters Mrs. Sarah McCully and Mrs. Elizabeth Williams. These old persons registered ; Jesse Ashby, eighty-eight years ; John McMakin, eighty- seven years ; Mrs. Baalam Anderson, eighty-one; Mrs. Peebler and D. H. Drake, each eighty-four years ; Geo. W. Devecman, eighty years.
D. J. Norton, Sr.
J. H. Stewart
George Brokaw
Robert Fisher
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Many antiquities were shown-a quilt fifty-two years old and still "crazy"; two glasses one hundred and fifty years old ; fruit dishes that had escaped the knocks and shocks of half a century ; fire shovels or "slices," as the New Englanders called them : an English two cent piece dating from 1442, before America was discovered, tools for working flax, books printed in 1768, etc.
The dinner was a reincarnation-johnny cake, honey, pies, chicken, roast ham, pot-pic, biscuits; slices of bread eight inches long and two inches thick, pickles a foot long, and one johnny cake measuring seventeen inches. Prof. S. W. Mountz sang Auld Lang Syne, Rev. Wmn. Poston prayed, and Hon. Sam. A. Russell made an eloquent talk. Dr. Abram N. Miller recited a poem on the flax scutcher, written by a Quaker girl. Father Drake sang one of his own songs, that had only sixteen stanzas, eight lines to the verse. It was quite a while passing a given point. Jas. Dawson, Uncle Billy Moore. and others spokc. It leaked out that 'Squire Everson married Uncle Billy, and the latter has been grateful ever since.
Officers elect : Jonathan H. Wilson, president ; J. S. Mapel, Dr. O. H. Prizer and W. J. Eyestone, vice-presidents ; N. Littler, secretary ; Jas. Daw- son, treasurer ; J. L. L. Terry, Ed. Deeds; J. S. Reeves, C. C. Hasty and Wm. Moore. executive committee.
The second annual meeting was in Brighton, four thousand people attend- ing. Meeting number three was held in Washington on August 28, '79, and two thousand came. Hon. C. W. Slagle, the orator.
The meetings lost popular interest after a series of years, as the same old hard luck stories were told, and the last meeting was held in the fall of 1898, in which W. Wilson, Jr., was seized while making his speech.
Society of Natural History .- In April, '59, it was organized by these officers : T. H. Dinsmore, president : N. Chipman and N. Everson, vice-presi- dents ; J. G. Cowden, secretary; N. P. Chipman, treasurer and keeper of cabinet. Members lost interest in bugs, rocks, etc., and ceased to do much at it, and the collection went to the junk-pile, and the society evaporated.
Free Public Library .- Washington owes her library to Dr. D. Scofield more than to any other one man. He put the yeast in the sponge. In August, 1878, the project took shape. The city council, justified by citizens, levied a half mill tax which produced five hundred dollars, which was invested in new books, to keep company with the donations of books made by Dr. Scofield, Mrs. Wm. Scofield, Judge A. R. Dewey, C. T. Jones, H. A. Burrell, and many more. Everybody served gratis-James A. Thompson as librarian, Geo. G. Rodman as secretary, and Dr. Scofield, Dr. J. D. Miles and Prof. D. W. Lewis as trustees, with all the volunteer helpers needed. John W. Templin followed as librarian, then Frank Graves, his capable wife Julia A. Graves
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being the real officer. She was succeeded by Miss Nannie J. Springer, who, with her nephew. John Springer, until recently judge in the Philippines, ap- pointed hy Gov. Taft, now president, and her nieces. Mrs. Laura Stichter and Mrs. Anna Huskey, served with credit fifteen years. Miss Eva Denny now holds that post.
Until the city hall was built in 1883, the library occupied the front upper room in the Press building several years.
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